War Photographer's Notebook

Chapter 210 To Friendship in the Snowstorm
"It's here, come down." Before Wei Ran finished speaking, he had already pushed open the car door.

Ralph, who was sitting in the driver's seat, looked at the sign in Finnish at the entrance of the small hotel, and finally shook his head helplessly. He was not as knowledgeable as his cheap grandfather Noah, who could understand Finnish and Norwegian.

Wei Ran, who got out of the car in the previous step, waited for Ralph to park the car and followed him, then gently pushed open the wooden door that was two meters high and only less than one meter five in width.

Accompanied by the pleasant sound of wind chimes, behind the counter facing the wooden door, an old lady with silver hair also raised her head and slowly put on her reading glasses.

"Do you have a reservation?" The old lady's kind tone carried a trace of alienation unique to Finns.

Wei Ran shook his head, "No reservations."

"How many days?" The old lady chased away the fat cat lying on her lap and continued to ask.

Wei Ran was not in a hurry to answer, but looked up at the oil paintings hanging on the walls of the lobby of this small hotel.Without exception, the lower right corner of these oil paintings has a combination of abstract windmills and the letter "M".

And Ralph, who was standing behind him, immediately widened his eyes after seeing those oil paintings. Although it was the first time he had seen these oil paintings, the conspicuous sign in the lower right corner was the same as the one at the entrance of the gallery he managed. The signs are the same!

"Those oil paintings are not going to be sold." The old lady asked again after a reminder, "How many days?"

Hearing this, Wei Ran finally looked away, "I want to find Mr. Carl and Mr. Conon."

"Who are you looking for?" The old lady's unchanging tone finally changed.

"Mr. Carl and Mr. Conon," Wei Ran said again, "or, comedian Mr. Florey and his writer, Mr. Jason."

"God! Where did you know these names?" The old lady stood up and asked in surprise.

Until this time, Wei Ran motioned for Ralph, who was in a daze, to come over, took out the pocket watch with gold case and the document that was knocked over by ink from the briefcase, and placed them on the old wooden counter on, "Ma'am, do you remember these things?"

The old lady picked up the pocket watch and looked at it, and then picked up the certificate for a long time before replying, "I remember, of course I remember, these are all Uncle Conon's things, and even this certificate is mine. When I was a child, I accidentally knocked over the ink bottle in the drawer to become like this!

But since then, I haven't seen them again.Where did you get them, young man?And where did I know the names of my father Carl and my uncle Conon? "

"It's a long story"

Without blushing, Wei Ran attributed the reason why he was able to find here all because he found the investigation records of the Soviet KGB after Konon once mailed fake news to Pravda and was found out.And followed the investigation record all the way to find here.

"Young man, what should I call you?" the old lady asked with a sigh.

"Victor"

"is a good name"

The old lady stretched out her hand very formally, "I am the daughter of Mr. Karl, Tinia, who you are looking for. Unfortunately, my father passed away more than ten years ago. Time has passed away."

"I am very sorry to hear this news"

Wei Ran said apologetically, although he already knew the result, but the same news came from Karl's daughter, the silver-haired old lady, which still made him a little sad beyond words.

For the metal book that could send him back to that war and back again, and for Wei Ran himself, the so-called passage of time and vicissitudes of life are just two white lights that dazzle his eyes, but for the stories he experienced personally People, that moment is more than half a century of waiting and searching.

"Although my father Karl and my uncle Conon have passed away, I still know the story about them and those Germans."

The old lady Tinya took a look at the document that had been blackened with ink by himself, and then asked, "So you came here on behalf of a descendant of a German soldier named Yannick Müller? "

"Indeed it is"

When Wei Ran said this, he patted Ralph on the shoulder beside him, "The son of the German soldier Yannick entrusted me to investigate his father's whereabouts, and the young man next to me is the client's grandson Ralph."

The old lady Tina looked carefully at Ralph who had a dazed face and didn't know what they were talking about, kindly pushed all the documents and pocket watches on the counter, and then walked out of the counter tremblingly, hunched over , leading the two of them into the corner room on the first floor.

The three walls of this room are covered with bookshelves, and on the wall with windows, many photos are hung.

The old lady Tinia tried to stand up straight, pointed to the group photo in one of the photos and said, "In that group photo, the shortest one is my father Carl, and the one next to him has one eye wrapped in gauze. The tall one is my uncle Conon.

And this room was the former office of the two of them.When I was very young, this was also my playground. I heard them tell the story more than once that they became friends with a few Germans in a hunter's cabin in a canyon during the war years. "

The old lady Tinia found out that Ralph had already held up his mobile phone to shoot a video under Wei Ran's prompt at some point.But she didn't care, instead, she kindly motioned the two of them to sit down on the sofa by the window, and continued to tell the stories she had heard when she was a child, telling every detail of Wei Ran's personal experience.

Until the end, the old lady said with a look of regret, "I became an assistant to my father and Uncle Conon when I was an adult. They made a lot of money from comedy performances at that time. But I remember very clearly that their first The thing is to buy the land where the hunter’s lodge I just mentioned is located. And what they have been wanting to do the most is to turn what they experienced in the hunter’s lodge into a script and move it to the on the stage."

"What happened later?" Wei Ran, who had been avoiding the camera, couldn't help asking, the things that happened later were not mentioned in the metal book, and he had never experienced them.

"Later, my uncle Mr. Konon committed suicide on the night of the disintegration of the Soviet Union. After all, he was a Soviet, not a Finn, let alone a Russian."

Tinia said sadly, "Since then, my father has bid farewell to the stage, and even the scripts they have written are locked forever in the safe of the hunter's lodge. I still remember that The script is called Friendship in a Snowstorm, and I still remember some of the lines in it."

"Mrs. Tiniya" Wei Ran asked hard-heartedly after a moment of silence, "The hunter's hut and those German soldiers now"

"The hunter's lodge is still there"

The old lady Tina said plainly, "Every winter, I will let my son repair the old house. As for the dead bodies of the Germans, according to my father, they have been kept in the ice cellar, but the entrance of the ice cellar It was sealed by my grandfather when I was very young, and my son went to look for it a few years ago, but unfortunately he didn’t find the entrance to the ice cellar.”

"I"

"Can"

The old lady gave an affirmative answer without waiting for Wei Ran to finish speaking, "Whether it is to pick up the German home or go to the hunter's lodge to see. But I can't take you there You have to wait for my son to get off work and let him take you there."

Wei Ran hurriedly said, "It's okay, we can wait."

"So, how many days are you going to stay?" the old lady asked abruptly.

Wei Ran was stunned for a moment, then said with a smile, "Let's take a day for now! We need two rooms."

"Wait here, I'll get you the keys and make a pot of coffee by the way." The old lady Tinia got up slowly, opened the door and walked out.

"Victor, please explain what's going on!" Ralph, who was well-preserved, asked after finishing the video shooting.

After briefly recounting the cause and effect, Wei Ran reminded, "Ralph, my work has been completed, and I will leave it to you to convey to Mr. Noah what happened in the winter of 1944."

Ralph nodded, hesitated for a moment, went to the window and called Noah.After a brief communication, he also sent the video he just shot.

"My grandpa Noah will be here as soon as possible"

After putting away the phone, Ralph asked apologetically, "Victor, if possible, can you come with me to the hunter's lodge in the canyon later? I don't know where to find someone who can Understand the Finnish and German translations.”

"As long as I can catch the flight back to Huaxia tomorrow." Wei Ran happily agreed, and he also wanted to see what the hunter's cabin looks like now.

They didn't make them wait long, a man who looked about forty years old hurriedly walked into the hotel, and greeted Wei Ran and Ralph enthusiastically, without the slightest impression of the "shyness" of Finns ".

This man who looked five or six points similar to Carl back then was Tinia’s son Andy. After his self-introduction, Wei Ran knew that this Andy was actually a well-known off-roader in the local area. Ski instructor.

The next thing was much simpler. The two sides communicated briefly, and Andy immediately took them out of the hotel and drove to a ski resort on the edge of the city.

I have to admit that Finland is really a country that produces racers. On the snow-covered road less than ten kilometers away, the off-road vehicle driven by Andy stepped on the accelerator almost all the way, showing off his skills from time to time. It's a drift and corner on the ice and snow road.

This was fine for Wei Ran, who had just completed the skydiving challenge not long ago and had already flown in the plane driven by Dalia several times, but Ralph, who was sitting next to him, almost cried out of fright.

The three of them didn't wait long in the off-road vehicle with the warm air on, and a bright red rescue helicopter slowly landed on the open space directly in front of the vehicle.

"Let's go, that place is a bit far from here." Andy pushed open the door, beckoned Wei Ran and Ralph to follow him into the cabin of the helicopter.

It could be seen that he was very familiar with the pilot of the helicopter, and he just said "go to the hunter's cabin", and the latter steered the helicopter into the air and flew out.

In less than half an hour, as the helicopter began to lower its altitude, Wei Ran gradually matched the terrain outside the porthole with his memory bit by bit.

With the roar of the propellers, the rescue helicopter advanced along a deep canyon at low altitude, and finally landed skillfully in a clearing in the middle of a coniferous forest.

"Come down and have a look, it's here."

Andy waited until the helicopter was turned off before opening the hatch, beckoning Wei Ran and Ralph to come down, and walked to the door of the pointed hunter's hut stepping on the knee-deep snow.

More than half a century has passed, although the hut has an additional iron roof, and the log walls seem to have been reinforced, and there is even a locked barbed wire fence around the hunter's hut.

But compared with the time when Wei Ran and others escaped the blizzard here, the overall change is not great, only the room used as a utility room was moved from the left side of the hunter's cabin to the right side to block the former gate.The door that was originally connected to the utility room has become a door, and a solid wooden platform has been laid on the door.

After Andy opened the locked door with the key, Wei walked around the solid wooden platform without a trace, walked into the interior of the hunter's cabin, and immediately found several very familiar things on the table by the window.

There were two dusty medicine chests on the log table, one filled with various medical equipment and the other some old-fashioned shaving and hairdressing tools.There is no doubt that this is a relic of Dr. Jason.

In addition, there are a deck of playing cards, a harmonica, several cloth bags rolled up with trouser legs, a palm-sized tin box, and a camera that Wei Ran once used on the table.

Under Andy's gesture, Wei Ran gently opened the rusty iron box, which was filled with semi-elliptical metal pieces.

A large part of the names recorded on these metal sheets are extremely unfamiliar to Wei Ran, and some of them are extremely familiar. Among those familiar names are Luca, Flory, Jason, and them. The Yannick I was looking for on this trip.

"I'm sure that the Yannick you're looking for should be here." Andy said apologetically, "But we don't know where the entrance to the basement of the ice cellar is."

"Mrs. Tinia said that Mr. Carl and Mr. Conon once created a script based on what happened in this hut?" Wei Ran closed the tin box again and reminded, "Maybe it was mentioned in their script Woolen cloth?"

Andy's eyes lit up when he heard this, "Victor, you reminded me, maybe it's really possible!"

Now, there was no need for Wei Ran to say anything, Andy immediately moved away from the sofa facing the fireplace, then opened a small safe hidden in the corner, and took out a loose-leaf notebook in a waterproof bag from it.

Through the waterproof bag, Wei Ran could clearly see that on the first page of this loose-leaf book, the same name was written in Russian and Finnish in two different characters and fonts——To Friendship in the Snowstorm.

(End of this chapter)